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The 11 hard f*cking lessons I learned (and relearned) in 2023:
I turned 24 year this year, quit my 6 figure 9-5 tech job to attempt a career in the cycling world, biked across the entire country, traveled in Colombia, the PNW and in Canada, got about four new tattoos, one of which took seven hours and covers half of my back, and celebrated a year of living with my cat in my new apartment in Baltimore city. Here is what I learned:
1. It is okay to like multiple people at once. Polyamory is valid. Love is not a finite resource.
Towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, I realized I was probably on the spectrum of polyamory and non-monogamy. I came to this realization while I was dating what seemed to be the perfect girlfriend. I had been talking to a prior love interest from my 2021 bicycle tour across Europe for the past several months. He and I would sometimes talk for hours on end, which included flirting, and the idea that once he moved to Brooklyn, I would go and visit him. I started dating a woman (let’s call her Aubrey) I met on Tinder while he and I were still in touch, and I soon realized that I was on the verge of emotionally cheating on Aubrey after a couple weeks of steady dating. A TikToker called “Decolonizing Love” popped up on my For You feed, who discussed many topics about romance, relationships, and compulsory monogamy. When I saw these content creators, I purged their videos, saving them over and over again in my little “dating and relationships” TikTok folder. I decided that I was not monogamous pretty soon after that, and it actually made a lot of sense. It explained why I had no problem dating multiple people at once (before things would ever become a relationship) and provided a partial explanation for why I often times felt misunderstood by my many semi-platonic/romantic relationships. It also explained why I experienced guilt while my relationship with Aubrey was progressing as I was talking to an unspecified platonic/romantic interest. It explained why I was fearful of the “relationship escalator” she and I were headed on. It explained the guilt I felt for being close friends with a man I used to hookup with but no longer did while she and I dated. It explained why I both did and did not regret making out with two different women on New Years Eve (which is when Aubrey and I were dating but not yet in a “relationship”).
I broke up with Aubrey, not because I didn’t want to be with her, but because I knew I couldn’t. She was monogamous (we had discussed this) and I was not. I felt deep internal anguish while we were dating because I felt disingenuous throughout our micro-relationship. Soon afterwards, the guy I was talking to said he met someone a week into moving to Brooklyn and didn’t want me to come visit. When I told him how much that hurt me, he essentially said that my feelings being hurt was entirely my fault, and none of his at all.
I spent hours sobbing in my apartment. Did I give up an amazing woman for yet another terrible man? Should I just force myself to be monogamous? Maybe polyamory is just a phase or an excuse to be a bad partner. Am I terrible person for discovering I was nonmonogamous while on the path to be monogamous with someone else? Am I a terrible person for hurting someone’s heart who only deserves the best from everyone and the world? I struggle through life with depression (which seems to come in tsunamis for me). At this point, my suicidal ideation was taking hold again. I couldn’t escape the thought that I was a greedy, selfish, liar and cheater, and don’t deserve to find love or be treated with love. I had just endured two breakups in one week. One breakup is often challenging on its own. Two in one week? My heart was stomped out and hardly beating.
Now, many months later, I know it was right to breakup with Aubrey. It was an unfortunate reality that just a few days later, a terrible man ripped my heart out and blamed me for the pain. I currently identify as solo-polyamorous. I’ve come to realize that love is not finite. If anything, love and relationships are a unique magical energy that is different in size, shape, wavelength, and shimmer for each person you develop it with. Love is not finite. Love is magic.
2. It is okay to grieve the loss of someone you left.
This pertains to the woman I broke-up with in January, my mother, brother, father, and many friends. The two most impactful were Aubrey, and my mother. I’ve already explained Aubrey above. Below is a poem that can describe my relationship with my mother better than I can on this page, and why it came to an end.
my mother didn’t want to hurt me,
but she was broken.
her brokenness cut into me
and made me bleed.
she didn’t know how to love,
or at least how to love me.
it didn’t even matter that she hurt me;
I just wanted her to be sorry.
she said that she loved me,
but it often felt like hate.
When I finally had enough and tried to be free,
she looked at me with desperation and cried,
“you are abandoning me!”
so, I stayed and I suffered,
and I did my best to love her.
as a woman, I have so much empath
for my mother, but as a daughter, I have so much anger.
my father’s eyes, my mother’s rage by Rose Brik
Sometimes leaving someone is the best option for both of you, even if it hurts initially. You must learn and be able to discern when a relationship is serving you and when it is hurting you.
3. There is not a single person who will be in your life forever. You are your only guaranteed support system you will ever have from the day you are born until the day that you die.
As I removed people from my life- people who didn’t fit in, people who were nice but didn’t connect with me on a deeper level, people who caused me pain and anguish, people who I didn’t feel comfortable being my true self around- I realized that no one, not even family or your childhood friends, are guaranteed to be with you forever. Someone could die, someone could end up being a shitty person. Someone could move far away. As terrible as it may sound, you need to learn to help yourself because there is no guarantee someone else will. I don’t say this to suggest you should be hyper-independent. I say this because if you are constantly externalizing your turmoil in the hopes of someone else coming to save you, you will be let down.
4. No one is going to come save you. You must save yourself.
Angels do not exist. Heroes aren’t what we see in the comics and cartoons. We live in a fragmented, capitalist hellbound society where healthcare is not a human right and poverty is used as motivation to coerce you into destroying your body in our workforce. I would love to believe that if we existed in a more harmonious, collective society, than maybe yes, angels would exist in the form of a family member, neighbor, or unsuspecting friend who can all support you when you need it. But that is a very rare case in this modern world. People may come and help you, and as they should. But you must learn how to save yourself, because there is no guarantee that someone will for you.
5. Forced friendships will not serve you well.
I’ve spent far too much of my life forcing friendships to work. From my high school friends who never invited me to go out or hang out. To my lunch time friends who I could tell weren’t thrilled to have me at the table. To my collegiate crew team who bullied me, but I chose to stay for the sport. I lost a friendship this year, to someone who opened their doors for me as I was transitionally homeless. I will always appreciate their kindness and how they gave me a cheap place to sleep after only knowing me for a few months. However, during the time I lived in their home, I grew resentful. This person is not a bad person, but for whatever reason, something was off. I felt like I couldn’t be myself. I felt like I couldn’t show the pain I felt each day. I felt ignored, unseen, and forced to mask. I know that this was never their intention, and I know they tried to be a good friend. I just don’t think we were fundamentally compatible, and it ended up blowing up in our faces. At the end of the day, I am thankful that we are no longer friends, because I had spent most of our months as friends feeling uneasy and masking. The friendship was forced (at least on my behalf) out of a sense of loyalty or obligation. It didn’t work, and it never has. The lesson learned is that forced friendships will never work, even if you feel like you have no reason to stop being friends.
6. Capitalism is oppression (relearned).
I’m not going to go on my soap-box here as to why capitalism is equal to oppression, because there are other people out there who can describe my belief much better than I can. They are shared below.
George Jackson (a black political prisoner in the 60s-70s) explaining how slavery never left our society- it simply morphed into neo-slavery. Letter can be read here.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
You might as well follow my Goodreads list here.
7. Community is deeply important to health and well-being. Find the people who love you for who you are.
In our capitalist society, we are fragmented from our communities. This was an intentionally construction of our lives- from large and separated homes, a lack of public parks and spaces, the overemphasis on individualism, the over applause for being “self-made”, hyperfixation on the heterosexual and monogamous family unit, devotion of our lands to cars. Etc… I could go on forever.
There is a reason why you feel stranded and overworked. Why you feel burnout, why you turn to DoorDash for food and Uber to go places. To other websites where you can pay someone to complete some task for you whereas in a community, you would probably have a family member or neighbor happily lend you a hand. Community is about helping each other out of kindness and mutual respect. We were never meant to go through life alone. It may be hard to find strong community where you are, but if you find it, hold onto it tightly. You will be glad you found it.
8. It’s better to be alone than to be with people who hurt you or only like you when you pretend to be someone else.
I’ve spent a large, large portion of my life, keeping people in my life who caused me deep pain. Whether it was my parents, “friends”, or romantic partners. I’ve done a lot to keep my peace this year. I’ve cut out many people from my life. I do get lonely. But at least with loneliness, I can learn how to love to spend time with myself. Loneliness is an ephemeral feeling that hurts far less than the pain others will cause you if you keep terrible people in your life.
9. Tell your friends how much you love them. Tell them more often than you think you need to.
Just tell them.
10. The more you tap into your true and authentic self, the happier and healthier you will become.
For the entire 1.25 years I worked at my 6-figure fancy remote tech job, I knew that it was both actively helping, and harming, my health. It was helping my health because in a country where health insurance is tied to your active employment or marital status, and where even with insurance, doctors appointments and medicine cost hundreds and thousands of dollars each month, more money is often correlated to better health. Being able to spend as much money as I needed on my health helped me begin to finally address many underlying chronic conditions I’ve endured for years. The remote nature of work also allowed me to pop in and out of doctor appointments and go run errands such as picking up medicine whenever I needed. Few other jobs will let you work remotely, and pay you well. I was lucky and grateful for this job, but I also knew it was killing me slowly.
You see, being a robot in a capitalist machine is a form of neo-slavery (as mentioned above, see George Jackson’s description of neo-slavery) that strips of us our humanity. I consider myself partially disabled (but will probably never get any kind of official certification of this), and frequently get sick. I am not capable of conforming to the 40 hour work week, working a Bullshit Job, pretending to care as I know I am getting paid enormously for a job where I have to constantly placate the temperamental emotions of men and CXO’s while I contribute nothing to society. What is the point of working 40 hours a week to only have two weeks a year of supposed relaxation? That is not freedom, and I do not understand why more people aren’t revolting against this devastating, soul-sucking, oppressive system in which we live.
I quit my job, because I knew that if I stayed with it longer, my desire to be dead would only grow stronger. I couldn’t see a point in being alive where I spend all my time doing something I hate for people I don’t respect. I couldn’t see a point in being “grateful” for my salary and using that as a way to gaslight myself into doing something I so deeply detested. As I have begun crafting a career for myself in the world of biking, the more I realize I am coming home to who I am. As an athlete, an artist, a creative, a writer, an entrepreneur, a neurodivergent person, a queer woman, a dis-abled human.
You can find dozens of articles from Google titled “Authenticity: The Deep Hurt of Hiding Your True Self” or “Seve Signs You’re Masking Your True Self” that can help explain what it means to mask your true self. As I have learned to remove myself of my mask, I have become more attune to my spirit within me. I am building an apartment, a lifestyle, a community and a career that resembles me. Every day I live my truth, the happier and healthier I become.
11. Things will always work out. You never know how, and you may never know when. But things will work out. I promise you that.
Call me spiritual or whatever it may be, but I’ve come to learn that the universe (God, Allah, the forces at will, whatever you want to call it) most often has good plans for us. It often comes as a game of leapfrog, where one day something bad will happen, and then from that bad, something good may happen. Or perhaps something bad happens and it will permanently negatively impact your life, but for whatever reason, it has perhaps brought you someone new who you love, or a new version of yourself you love. I don’t mean this to say that I am, or that you should be, grateful for every hardship or trauma you have endured. I have a wealth of trauma that I would never wish on anyone else, and I have many friends who would probably feel the same. What I am alluding to is radical acceptance of our hardships, and the ability to trust that if we acknowledge the bad yet keep our heads up, then perhaps things will turn out just fine some day.